ADC (Amanda Dawn Christie)- You play many roles in life. You are a filmmaker, a curator, a scholar, and a writer. How do you reconcile some of these roles? For instance, how does your curatorial practice influence your filmmaking practice and vice versa?

GC (Gerda Cammaer) - It is not always easy. These different roles shift in importance depending on what I am doing most at that time, and as such they do not mingle much, but they do interfere with each other or reinforce each other over time. My interest as a scholar has been mostly documentary and experimental film, and that is what I write about and present on at academic conferences for example. Obviously the fact that this became the main focus of my work as a scholar is a consequence of the fact that this is also what I do as a filmmaker. But it is as much based on all the experience I have as a programmer, experience that gives me a first hand knowledge of experimental film in Canada in general. This being said, my role as a programmer and scholar are easy to reconcile [...] while my role as a filmmaker is not as easy to combine with the others. This has to do with several factors, the most important being that I use a different part of my brain when I am working on a film than when I write, study or teach film. I have noticed several times that if I don’t separate the creative work from the intellectual labor, my films suffer: they are “thought” into being and thus are less of an “experience”. They don’t work as much on an emotional level – and that is what I want to achieve with my work. This even determined the work I did for my PhD, one of the first research-creation theses in Canada: for this I did not work with my own images, but deiced to work with found-footage so that I could make the work and write about it in similar ways. In other words, it was like I was citing in the films, just as I was citing from literary sources in the text. Overall my experience as a filmmaker is very useful both for my work as a scholar and as a programmer, because it gives me a hands-on knowledge about filmmaking, both the techniques and the language, that helps tremendously to chose work, to judge it and to describe it. I think that it is easier for me to decipher how a work was made and what the artist is trying to do or say, than it is for someone who doesn’t have that experience, and that is also what I try to integrate in my essays for film programs in stead of having a more (or only) art historical or theoretical approach. I also “edit” my film-series as I would edit a film: I try to find a natural flow for them, both in form and content, and make all the different films work together as if they were shots of one film. And last but not least, I also try to use a bit more “imaginative” language when describing the work so that the images and sounds can come to life in the reader’s mind, even without or before seeing the work.

ADC - Does your filmmaker self get along well with your curator self? Do they ever compete with one another, or have they found a comfortable and compatible balance?

GC - Well over time, I think that there is a fruitful cross pollination between the two, but combining programming with filmmaking in the same time frame, that doesn’t work. The main reason is that I do not want to be influenced by other artists when I am working on a film of my own. Also, to be able to make the kind of films I make I need to be in my own bubble, and if at that time other films “float” (to use another water term) in my head, I have noticed that it always takes me off track. If I persist, in the end I will usually get back to the original film I originally had in mind and it will in the end truly be “my” film, but to make a film like this takes a lot more work since I constantly need to filter out all the other influences and eliminate all the side-tracks in my mind (often affecting the editing of a film for example). I therefore do not work on my own films anymore when I am either writing or programming. Despite knowing better I tried it again when working on this program, only to see how my own film was suffering and therefore I decided not to finish it. I will make the film that I want to make when I have the personal time and space to do so, that is: when I can live with the film, and with the film only, and have the freedom to use only my right brain.

ADC - Do you feel that screening these works outdoors, in the elements, in the public will change the way that people read and respond to them?

GC - I am convinced that this will be the case. In this series, some pieces have a more musical soundtrack, others have lots of nature elements already included in the work. I am curious to experience the natural mix that will occur with the sounds of the Marshes in Sackville. I also worry. I am very sensitive to sound and I love to see films in the complete silence and darkness of a theatre (something that is becoming an exception since audiences are more and more noisy). Just like a cell-phone can be very disruptive in the middle of a film, so can an airplane spoil a film, especially if it is a sensitive piece. But overall, I am hoping for a happy marriage between the works, the audience, and the environment. As an experimental film person, I am very aware of the beauty of “happy accidents” and thus the Sackville wind, the swamp frogs and the summer crickets are all cordially invited to come enjoy this water film program with us and to voice their appreciation.

ADC - Many of these films that you have programmed are made and finished on 16mm film. And yet in this day and age, many people are working in digital media such as digital video, and high definition. In this age of youtube, vimeo, and iPhones many young people have never even seen a film projector, how do you think these works will be read?

GC - I hope that by showing works on 16 mm I will open the door to a new discovery of this important medium and its history. I teach 16 mm to young students, and each time it is more of a culture shock for them (and for me). Last year I had the first generation who had never dealt with analogue (photo) film and thus they did not understand what a negative is, or that film is light sensitive. But in the end, once they have tried it and experienced the rich pallet of the medium film, some of my students declare themselves film devotees for life. Moreover, my entire PhD was dedicated to unravel and counter a lot of the “film is dead” debate that dominated the past decade and its consequences, such as the many filmschools abandoning film and switching entirely to digital video. But I actually see a lot of young people who rediscover the medium and have fun with it. Film has its own qualities, and so has video. I have never considered one medium better than the other, but I always try to use and show each of them for what they each do best. Showing film on film and programming films (yes or no together with videos) is an important ongoing task to keep film alive as well as to show the rich history of the medium and of experimental film in particular. Experimental film is “the” genre by excellence to show what film is and can do, because experimental filmmakers always use the specific material qualities of film as part of their vocabulary. To see scratches, hand coloured patches or particular frame-by-frame effects that are only possible in film are a refreshing experience in era dominated by the low resolution and muddled images on youtube and the clean digital images of high definition video. And the rhythm of the rattling projector in the background, combined with the intermitting motion of film, have a very different effect on us as an audience that can never be replaced or imitated by anything else. For that reason only, showing 16 mm film should be an obligatory chapter in art education.

ADC - Why do you think these artists chose to work with film as a material instead of digital formats?

GC - Film has a painterly quality that is very different from video. Traditionally people tend to compare it to the difference between oil painting and water coulours or between drawing and etching. I am personally very careful with these kind of comparisons, since that easily leads to debates about high and low art, and (experimental) film is then all too easily dismissed as an elitist medium or art form. Obviously, these statements are also based on the observation that film is an expensive medium. But the latter is a myth. When limiting oneself to hands-on filmmaking and working with small amounts of film, it is not that expensive. Plus, while in video the tapes or flashdrives themselves might be cheaper, the entire process including all the software, the hard drives, the many transfers etc. is also expensive. It all depends what one wants to do, and how. Film has a highly saturated image, and that immediately evokes a different experience, call it cinematic if you like. Most artists working with film play with this quality to give their work an imaginative layer that takes us as an audience somewhere else: it is a bit of a “magic” experience. (Digital) video is more of a “recording” medium. That doesn’t mean that it can’t tell imaginative stories, but it will have to rely more on other elements than its basic image layer than film, for example by using more effects, or more theatrical components (performances, costumes etc.). A film images also has more depth, and because it is composed of 24 frames per second (in other words still images projected at a speed that we see them as a constant movement) it really affects us differently. For most (experimental) filmmakers this is an essential component of how they work with film and even how they conceive their work as films. Overall, although I have worked with film for years now, it is difficult to pin down what it is that makes film film, but I do know that if there would no longer be film or artists working with film, that we would have lost a valuable experience. It is therefore important to keep showing film, and it is great that art galleries and media organizations such as Struts Gallery and Faucet Media Arts Center actively contribute to keeping (experimental) film alive with this series of film programs.